Devices · drives that travel in a bag
One drive costs £300 + VAT, and the look that settles the price is free. Before either, though, there are two suspects. After removing the casing we see a simple internal hard disk, connected to the USB port through a small board (the bridge), which can fail on its own. Most of these boards also hold the encryption keys used by the device, so we need the unit along with its cable and power adapter. Then add a year of being carried around Nottingham in a bag. Telling the two suspects apart takes some work, and that is where the job begins.
Ask an engineer and the first look is free
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| What is happening | What usually causes it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Drive not accessible, and Windows offers to format it | The cable came out mid-write and the volume now shows as RAW, with everything under it intact | Turn it down, then unplug it |
| Windows reports USB device not recognized, and no name for it exists anywhere in Windows | Either the bridge or the disk connected to it has stopped responding | One spare cable, and then no further attempts |
| The only message from Windows: Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed) | Windows receives no identifier of any kind for the device | A failed bridge. Bench work from here |
| Data error (cyclic redundancy check) when you open it | Sectors are going on the disk behind the board | Pull the plug, and leave it that way |
| RAW or Not Initialized in Disk Management | No readable partition table, so Windows prompts you to format the entire drive | Say no. Initialising is what ends the job. |
| A malfunctioning USB device warning on every port you plug it into | Either the 5V rail inside the enclosure has failed, or the bridge has | Boards quit long before platters ever do |
Your case number is assigned when the item is received. Then an engineer works out what went wrong (no charge). At this point, you receive a basic summary of which parts are recoverable and which are not. You also receive a single written quote for the price of the recovery. Accept the quoted price or turn it down, and there is no obligation to pay anything.
Every one of these starts with the same question: shell or disk? Externals show up dead week after week, LaCie and Iomega more than most, and in most of them a working disk sits inside an enclosure that simply won't work.
Nobody turned this on; it worked like that when it left the factory. The real issue is whether the encryption happens within the enclosure or on the drive itself. Portables typically encrypt through the bridge, so the keys sit on that very small board, nowhere near the platters. Take them off the board and what appears to be random noise becomes your folder structure once again.
No attempt is made to recover data until a complete, sector-by-sector copy of the drive exists, made on a hardware imager. From then on the rest of the recovery is applied to the copy, so the original drive is never accessed again. All recovered data comes back on new media, and we pay for the return postage. A surveyor with one set of site photos and a family archive out of a loft in Beeston get the same service.
A complete file list will be provided before any invoicing. Simply say "yes" or "no" to what we found: yes means it is billed, no means it is not, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. What we find is posted to you on media purchased specifically for your case, at no additional cost to you. We consider the process complete once you have opened those files yourself on your own computer.
Worth knowing: through 2023, 2TB and 4TB SanDisk Extreme portable drives would silently drop files, with no warning. A US class action was filed against Western Digital over this, and although the company released a firmware update partway through, it did little to resolve the issue. Any drive from that family behaving erratically should be imaged now rather than later.
There were nine days until the deadline when the Passport began ticking. As well as replacing the head stack from a matched donor, we ran the imaging at a very low speed. On units like this the encryption keys are on the bridge board, not on the platters, so we read the keys from the bridge board. References, figures and chapters were available again with a week to go.
No. The unit comes as it is, with its power supply and lead. On a portable, the encryption happens within the USB circuitry and not within the disk, so a good disk that arrives by itself is just ciphertext to us, and that is all we see. Externals should come in their own enclosures regardless.
Never. When Windows prompts with this message, it simply means Windows cannot read the file system on the drive; it does not tell you whether any files are there or not. Agree to the prompt and the structures a rebuild works from will be overwritten.
Spinning drives don't take well to being moved. They go through hours of vibration while travelling in a van, they are lifted and put down several times at each end, and once you reach your destination there could be a big change in temperature. After this, many spinning drives that were already near failing will not turn on. We hear about one of these most weeks.
Almost all of the time. There are three factors which decide it: the drive itself, the small circuit board mounted on the drive, and a bridge chip working well enough to hand over the keys. Damage to the outer casing is almost irrelevant.
The look costs nothing. It gives you a file listing of what opened and what did not, along with the cost of finishing the job, in writing, before anything chargeable begins. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Do not switch the drive on until you have that listing.